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Is $Billion The New $Million?

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Rosie-Riveter.jpgEverywhere I look, I see $1 billion tossed around like candy in a parade. No one uses $1 million for anything anymore; in fact, a million anything is paltry, peanuts, and unimpressive. It’s just so yesterday, right?

Case in point from these headlines and tidbits:

• Twitter IPO seeks $1.4 billion
• Starbucks fined $2.8 billion
• Crocs Market Cap $1.2 billion and seeking price tag of $1.5 billion in leveraged buyout
• Hershey net revenue $1.51 billion
• U.S. Postal Service Delivers loss of $5 billion
• J.P. Morgan and U.S. Reach $13 billion accord
• Iranian gas firm driven to bankruptcy with $4 billion debt
• Western Union moved $79 billion in cash transfers in 2012

Corporations are drowning in money and being fined or losing more. It’s astonishing how much currency is afloat; yet, economies, governments, and small business are struggling big time.

Money Is A Mindset

Hard to think your own company is successful when everyone around you is dealing in billions, right?

Here’s the very good news – those who are dealing with that kind of valuation, market cap, debt, fines, and whatever else are the ones taking the heat, in the spotlight, getting sued, being investigated, and answering to investors.

It’s heartening to know there’s safety in flying under the radar and not having billions of dollars get tossed around like (read what I said in the first sentence).

To answer my own question, I do indeed believe billion is the new million. We smaller fish, however, cannot forget that we’re the drivers of economies, too. We hire people, we buy services, we tick and tock, and generally are accessible to the kids out of school who need a mentor or somewhere to intern.

I’m pretty content knowing that in my book, a million still matters…as long as it’s a black million and not red.

How about you?

How Twitter IPO Changes Its Focus

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Twitter-logo.jpgFew people understand what happens when a company goes public. We watched how Facebook maneuvered an ever increasingly heated spotlight, and now Twitter is undergoing the same.

In this piece Nov. 11, 2013 in Advertising Age, “Twitter’s task: Getting new users to understand it,” it seems the biggest issue Twitter has with new users is its complexity.

To follow this line of thinking, go back to the very first tweet you posted. Perhaps you need to go back to the very first time you logged in and saw a blank screen with some stranger popping up to say hi. Were you as nervous as I and almost backed out?

There are still people who don’t engage on Twitter because they believe the common misnomer that it’s a bunch of people talking about what they eat and where they go to the movies. We in the know, know better, right?

Because Twitter is now publicly traded (NYSE: TWTR) with a valuation of more than $20 billion and a 73 percent “stock pop” (says Ad Age) on day one of trading, it has to think differently about how to behave:

  • Attract more of the masses (a major hurdle)
  • Onboarding new users and making them feel comfy out of the gate
  • Reduce consumer churn – the rate that new users drop off in a short period of time
  • Increase advertising dollars for marketers who want proof the users are there to click through and make a buy

Take a look at Twitter’s number of users in the U.S., says Advertising Age:

  • Q1 2013 – 48 million monthly active users
  • Q2 2013 – 49 million monthly active users
  • Q3 2013 – 53 million monthly active users

Facebook has three times the scale. At the end of Q2 2013, it boasted 179 million monthly active users

It’s like comparing apples to oranges, however, because look at the skill and understanding a Twitter peep has to communicate. When you read tweets from accounts trying to sell, they’re awkward. Engagement and relationship building are the keys to earning followers; Facebook is about existing relationships among friends you already know. Not so Twitter.

It’s because of Twitter that I have a new network of true and real friends I’ve met IRL, spoken with on the phone, engaged with on Skype, and hired into my business. Not so Facebook.

There are so many ways Twitter can be used to enhance knowledge of the world.

When there is a natural disaster like the ones in New Orleans, Haiti, the Philippines, New Zealand, and elsewhere, Twitter comes alive with tweets around the world providing updates about the crises and how peeps can help. Not so Facebook.

The hashtag is finally coming into its own as a way to follow conversations; its now in use by Facebook AND Google+. We owe that to Twitter as the first channel to adopt hashtags; I think I first began hashtagging #RockHot in August 2010, and all the threads of tweets featuring that phrase I created are documented. Pretty cool.

I digress…

What I’m hoping doesn’t happen with Twitter as it has with Facebook is the social channel’s intense need to put advertisers first and revenue above service. We who have been around since the early days know quite well the quirky and secretive nature of Twitter with a tribe mentality.

It’s too bad Twitter will change itself to appeal to the masses who don’t and won’t get it (although I’ve heard from a lot of moms that the kids are hitting Twitter in droves and foregoing Facebook). Groups of young boys (about freshmen age in high school) are forming Twitter accounts and buying followers to gain immediate traction.

Perhaps Twitter needs to look within among users who already prefer the channel over the others instead of trying at this late juncture to appeal to those who won’t get it to also thus appeal to marketers sinking advertising dollars into the channel.

Time will tell…